Climate Science Glossary

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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

"If (and it’s a very big if) implementing the new tax actually does result in a cut of 5% in Australian emissions, which is the government’s target, then the theoretical amount of global warming averted would be much less than one-thousandth of a degree; even cutting Australia’s emissions altogether would avert warming of only 0.02 deg. C (two one-hundredths of a degree)."

"Would more warming, if it occurs, be beneficial or harmful? Both, depending upon geography, but overall the net benefits may well exceed the harm. For it is no accident that text-books call a warmer period that occurred about 8,000 years ago the “Holocene climatic OPTIMUM”."

"In reality, the great majority of independent scientists are agnostic rather than sceptical about the hypothesis of human-caused warming – it is the likely magnitude of human-caused warming, not the existence of a warming tendency in the first place, that is under debate."

"The late 20th century warming of half a degree, and the current pause or cooling, fall well within the bounds of previous natural temperature change; they are therefore not necessarily alarming, nor necessarily of human causation."

"A gentle warming of up to about 0.5 deg. C occurred between 1979 and 1998; but since 1998 global temperature has now been static or cooling gently for ten years, despite continuing increases in CO2 emissions."

"Closing down the whole Australian industrial economy might result in the prevention of about 0.02 degrees of warming. Reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 (the government's target) will avert an even smaller warming of about 0.002 degrees. Ergo, cutting Australian emissions will make no measurable difference to global climate."

"Between 2001 and 2010 global average temperature decreased by 0.05 degrees, over the same time that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased by 5 per cent. Ergo, carbon dioxide emissions are not driving dangerous warming."

"A mild warming of about 0.5 degrees Celsius (well within previous natural temperature variations) occurred between 1979 and 1998, and has been followed by slight global cooling over the past 10 years. Ergo, dangerous global warming is not occurring."

"For Australia to introduce a carbon dioxide tax ahead of the large emitting nations would be to expose our whole economy to competitive and economic disadvantage for no gain whatsoever....For Australia, the total cost for a family of four of implementing a carbon dioxide tax is likely to exceed $2000 a year
"

"At its mooted introductory level of $20 to $30 per tonne, a carbon dioxide tax is unlikely to effect any reduction in emissions. As the price is ratcheted up, as is intended, to the point at which energy-intensive industry is forced offshore, Australian emissions will decline, as will Australia’s standard of living, but world emissions will remain the same. Such a policy is senseless"

"Taxing the emissions of [large emitters] will cause them to move offshore, or destroy them....To levy an unnecessary tax on [coal] is economic vandalism that will destroy jobs and reduce living standards for all Australians"

"no evidence exists that Australian climatic phenomena—including droughts, floods, storms, heat waves and snowstorms—differ now in intensity or frequency from their natural historical and geological patterns of strong annual and multi-decadal variability"

"that we can’t identify and measure [an anthropogenic warming signal] indicates that the signal is so small that it is lost in the noise of natural climate variation....Global average temperature at the end of the twentieth century fell well within the bounds of natural climate variation"

"Since [the 1980s], with the formation of the IPCC, and a parallel huge expansion of research and consultancy money into climate studies, energy studies and climate policy, an intensive effort has been made to identify and measure the human signature in the global temperature record at a cost that probably exceeds $100 billion. And, as Kevin Rudd might put it, “You know what? No such signature has been able to be isolated and measured.”"

"...there was indeed a warming – a mild, gentle warming, nothing alarming at all - in the late 20th Century for about 20 years and that warming reached a peak in the El Nino year in 1998. Since then, it's been very gently cooling."